SOURCE: '"The Simetry, which Gives a Poem Grace': Masque, Imagery, and the Fancy of The Maid's Tragedy," in Renaissance Drama, Vol. 3, 1970, pp. 111-35.

In this essay, Neill contends that the wedding masque functions as a structural element in The Maid's Tragedy, involving the "ironic manipulation of running imagery, which links the masque not only to the wedding night, but to the action of the play as a whole."

Masques are a commonplace feature of the drama written for the private playhouses of the Jacobean and Caroline periods. Their spectacular appeal to an audience, which (whatever the statistical details of its composition) was nearly dominated in matters of taste by a genteel coterie, is obvious. Thanks to the work of Enid Welsford and M. C. Bradbrook, it is now generally recognized that in the hands of the more intelligent dramatists "these pretty de-vices" may also have important structural...